Long Lost Twin
by starspangledpumpkin
Summary: It was the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts and, while many celebrated, George shut himself in to mourn the loss of Fred. He didn't think anyone would understand what it was like having a twin but somehow... Hermione does. For the Houses Competition. NOT A PAIRING. ONE-SHOT.


**For the Hogwarts Houses Competition - I'm a Hufflepuff**

 **Category:** Themed

 **Prompt:** Hurricane (loosely used)

 **Word Count:** 2,358

 **Beta:** Aya

 **J.K. Rowling once said that Hermione was originally supposed to have a sister but couldn't find a way to include her and eventually just wrote her out. I wrote her back in.**

 **THIS IS NOT A PAIRING**

—

George sat on the floor of his living room contemplating a bottle of fire whiskey. A staring contest he was losing.

It was the anniversary of the defeat of Lord Voldemort and the inclement weather had not dampened anyone's partying mood. Well… anyone who could ever get in the partying mood on this day.

In the years after the Battle of Hogwarts, the Wizarding World had undergone so many changes in laws and society. George still lived in his flat above Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, but now, he lived with Angelina Johnson and Hermione Granger.

Angelina had been Fred's girlfriend, but George always had a thing for her and being Fred's twin, she was half in love with him anyway. It didn't put any strain on their relationship and, most days, they were happy or content.

Hermione was a bit of a surprise. George thought she might've wanted to live with Harry and Ron in their flat, but she claimed she had lived with them for nearly a year and decided never again. Her relationship with Ron was going steady but she just wasn't ready for that sort of commitment.

Even so, she couldn't very well live by herself. The economy had gone belly up after the war, so the new generation of Hogwarts graduates got the low paying jobs and couldn't make enough for rent.

With this hurricane, housing units were becoming damaged and finding a place to live would be even more difficult in its aftermath. The Ministry wizards didn't have time to deal with the younger generation and that meant denying them enough money to sustain themselves.

George had decided to offer his home to Hermione because he felt like she was a younger sister to him and didn't want to leave her hanging. When he discussed it with Angelina, she agreed and was the one who extended the invitation.

So, they lived in a sort of harmony. Easy to do when Angelina traveled for Quidditch matches, Hermione was a workaholic and hardly ever home, and George worked on products in his laboratory beside the stockroom behind the front of his shop.

Angelina was away now for a Quidditch Match and promised she'd be home soon. Good. He hated having her see him cry like this.

The door to the flat opened and George stilled. There was a heavy sigh and a raspberry as the door shut.

"Hello?" It was Hermione. "Anyone home?"

There was the rustling sound of a bag being set on the counter and shoes getting kicked off under some chair or table. Hermione had a bad habit of leaving her shoes everywhere and then freaking out when she couldn't find them.

Hermione entered the living room and her eyes grew sad at the sight of her friend. She approached him, burgundy robes weighted down by the wet hem, and stopped just beside him to lift up a lock of his hair.

"What've you done?" she asked.

The shop was closed today which had been a bad idea. Left alone with his thoughts, George had wandered the flat aimlessly and when he passed a mirror, for a fleeting moment he had hoped it was Fred. It happened often.

Every single time, he wished Fred would shout 'Gotcha!' jump out of the mirror and give him a giant hug then rave about how faking his death was the "prank of the century". But it never happened. So he had taken a frantic color changing charm to his hair but evidently he missed some patches, giving him more of a calico look.

Hermione sat down on the floor beside him and sighed.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Well, I'm not drinking myself to oblivion," he replied, still staring the glass bottle of alcohol down. "So… a step up."

The thunder rumbled for about thirty seconds, cutting through the silence, yet making it no less awkward. Lightning flashed, lighting the darkened room sporadically like when you blink rapidly and miss half your view.

"I know how you feel," Hermione stated.

George felt a twinge of anger. The rain outside fell harder which didn't seem possible.

"How could you possibly know how I feel?" he growled. "How does obliviating your parents and shipping them off to Australia even compare to what I felt when I lost Fred?"

Hermione studied him neutrally and got up. Her bare feet padded on the hardwood floors, out of sync with the rhythm of the rain on the roof.

When she returned, she had dressed down to yoga pants and a University sweatshirt. She carried a blue box with an indistinguishable pattern on it. She plunked back down beside him and dug around the box until she removed a photo.

"This is just between us," she said, holding it to her chest. "If my relationship with Ron goes anywhere I might tell him, but this… I've kept to myself. Here."

George took the photo from her and turned toward the table lamp to see it better. It was a professionally shot photo of two young girls about eight or nine. They both had medium brown skin and masses of dark curly hair with ribbons tied in it. Completely identical in their periwinkle summer dresses and their sweet smiles, they were utterly adorable.

Hermione pointed to the girl on the right, "That's me," she pointed to the girl on the left, "and that's my twin sister."

George looked at Hermione in fascination.

"I didn't know you have a twin."

"Had."

"Beg pardon?"

"I had a twin," she corrected blandly.

"Oh…" George looked at the photo again, lightly touching the face of the girl who was supposedly the twin of the woman beside him. "What was her name?"

"Paulina," Hermione replied. "My parents love A Winter's Tale. It's by William Shakespeare. Their first date was seeing this play at the Globe Theater. Seemed only fitting they named their daughters after the queen and the noblewoman."

"When did— how did—"

The unfinished question hung in the air. Rather than answer right away, Hermione looked down misty-eyed at the photos and sifted through them, pausing once in a while as if she were remembering something. George didn't ask the question again and instead, returned his attention to the photos; most of them were candid.

Hermione and Paulina playing in the park. Hermione and Paulina dressed as witches for Halloween. Hermione and Paulina sitting side-by-side in a massive arm chair and reading from a book. In several candid photos, George noticed Hermione's hands were in the air making odd poses while Paulina looked on. One in particular had been charmed to move like wizards' portraits. Young Hermione's hands moved wildly around her with her sister fixated on each motion.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, pointing to it.

"I'm signing," said Hermione, her right hand automatically gesticulated. "See… Paulina was deaf; I told her everything I knew, so she would know everything, too. Hearing children are cruel to deaf children… they learn it from their parents I suppose. My sister and I were always outcasts."

"Why?"

"Well… with our parents being dentists, we went to the best school. The Royal School for Deaf Children wasn't giving her the proper education, so she would sit with me at school in my classes and I would explain it to her after. She could read lips if people enunciated, but it was easier to sign for her."

"But _why_ were you outcasts?"

"Those white kids were just… so… mean! They pulled our hair, made fun of my sister when she tried to talk. They always made comments about our skin and our lips and… urgh! Even the teachers were awful!" George was startled at the hostility Hermione still showed even after all this time. "'Sit down, sit on your hands.' 'Oh, your deaf sister couldn't understand the question I asked her? Too bad, she should have been paying attention'! 'One Granger sister is a spaz and the other is a dummy! What a pair!'"

Hermione caught her anger, took a deep breath, and leaned back against the couch. She pulled on one of her tiny curls until it became straight then watched it bounce back into a tight coil.

"When I first met Harry and Ron on the train… I told them nobody in my family had magic… That wasn't true," she sighed shakily. "We both had magic and we both knew it. We thought we were superheroes. One time, we pretended that we were fighting a monster that took people out with its scream and Paulina was immune because she couldn't hear." Hermione chuckled at the memories. "When we were little, we'd push a ball back and forth with our minds and sometimes we'd try to summon books but that just made them fall off the shelf."

George couldn't help but repeat his question, his curiosity overpowering restraint and boundaries.

"What happened to Paulina, Hermione?"

"Our… our fifth year of primary school… she got sick," she replied, suddenly intent on picking at her nails, "she'd always been sick and I knew it, but that was when she was hospitalized. When my Hogwarts letter came in and Professor McGonagall told me I was a witch I was so excited. When we went to the hospital, Paulina had her letter. The staff had quite a fright when an owl got inside."

"I imagine so," said George, picturing an owl knocking over Muggle Healers in an effort to get to a little girl.

"She was excited, too," Hermione continued. "We talked about what we were going to do, and we planned on being the most powerful witches in the world. Together… we'd be unlimited. Nobody could restrain us or keep us from succeeding because of our skin color or gender or handicaps… I told her that we'd make a potion to cure her. When Mum took me to Diagon Alley, we scoured the Healers books… but wizards don't have a cure for cancer."

"Oh…"

George didn't quite know what cancer was, but he read it in passing when he and Fred were cooking up their Skiving Snackboxes. They had to read a lot of medical books to find illnesses that could get them out of class without being fatal. He knew it attacked a person's body and under the 'cure' tag it read: seek Muggle Healer.

"She died on Halloween," said Hermione, signing slowly as she spoke, as if the movements had been restrained all these years and finally returned. The piece of her that had been missing. "It felt like a part of me died. I— I didn't know what to do without her. We never had any other friends. That Halloween at school… I wasn't crying in the lavatory because Ron was mean to me…"

George remembered his first year without his brother. How had Hermione managed it? How had she kept something like this to herself?

"It still hurts," she continued tapping her index fingers together twice. "But after so long… it's easier to think about the good times than… that day."

"I suppose," said George. A light smile crossed his lips. "I remember when Fred and I first showed signs of accidental magic. Mum had such a fright, we ended up on top of the ice box to get to the cookies she made."

Hermione laughed.

"Did I ever tell you the first prank Fred and I made?"

"No, you didn't."

"So, the Skiving Snackboxes were our first successful pranks that we sold, but coming up with the fever fudge and nosebleed nougats were the end of a long and painful process."

"I imagine so," said Hermione, cringing at the thought of intentionally making yourself sick.

"Well, we were trying to figure out the puking pastilles without poisoning ourselves or our buyers," he said, "and I guess we miscalculated something. We used whiscottle in one of the recipes."

Hermione furrowed her brow.

"Isn't that the plant that looks like bubbles when it blooms?"

George nodded and chuckled.

"When we made the potion, Fred and I each had a bit to see how it reacted."

"Wouldn't that make you burp bubbles?" Hermione asked.

"Well… it certainly caused bubbles."

"Wha—" Hermione paused and gasped. "No!"

George broke into hysterics.

"We farted bubbles for a week!" he howled.

"How did Molly react?" Hermione asked, shaking from laughter.

"Well, we had to infect everyone so she would think it was a mysterious illness!"

"I imagine it smelled awful," Hermione giggled.

"You'd think so but we also put peppermint into the recipe because Mum made Charlie drink it once when he ate something he shouldn't've."

"Oh NOOOO!" Hermione shrieked, covering her mouth to hide her grin. While peppermint could soothe aching tummies, it also had the effect of causing one to vomit. In this case… it did neither.

"It took three days for it to wear off and Mum still never suspected what happened."

"I'm sure she knew," said Hermione. "You can't hide anything from mothers. It's a sixth sense."

They swapped stories about their twins all night and even managed to eat some food despite sadness and longing. The outer edges of the hurricane finally passed them by and left behind a light and comforting drizzle.

"Hermione?"

"Yes, George?"

"Will you teach me how to sign?" he asked.

"Of course… George?"

"Yes?"

"Perhaps you can teach me how to make a few of those pranks you like." She smiled. "I bet I can find a way to improve them."

"That… sounds like fun actually."

"Although, first we should probably fix your hair," Hermione tone turned teasing. "I don't particularly care about physical appearances, but Angelina is the one who has to look at you. We can dye it a dark brown, okay? We'll even get it my shade if you want, but only for a short while."

George nodded in agreement and they headed to the bathroom to fix his hair.

It was nice to have someone who knew what he was going through. Nobody could replace Fred in his life, but he could learn to live on his life with an honorary sister like Hermione guiding him.


End file.
